Letters to the Editor

In the April “Letters to the Editor” column, two people
made comments about commercial applications for Linux. Every time I
call a software manufacturer about an application, I ask if they
have a version to run on Linux. If not, I ask them to put in a
request.

I use Linux as my main operating system at work with Wabi so
that I can use MS Office. Now that MS has upgraded Office, I am
finding it hard to maintain this plan.

To convince more companies to build software applications for
Linux, it might help to run a survey on a web site. The survey
would find out how many people are running Linux, if they would be
willing to buy software applications, and what price they would be
willing to pay. The information garnered from the survey should be
made public.

—David Hepner dfh@svl.trw.com

X Display Fix for Lifebook

In response to Michael Scott Shappe, “Accelerated X Laptop
Display Server v4.1”, March 1998 (Issue 47), there is a simple fix
to the problem of the rightward-shifted X display on the Fujitsu
Lifebook (and possibly other laptops with a Phoenix BIOS, where the
problem arises).

Go into the BIOS setup, select “Advanced”, then “Video
Features”, then “Compensation: Enabled”. The X display will now
fill the screen (using either XFree86 or Xi),
and you can run Linux in text mode. Windows (I
boot both 95 and NT 4.0) will still work with no problems (other
than the usual ones).

I enjoyed Mr. Browning's article in the March 1998 issue,
“Getting Rid of Spam”, on using
procmail and the Alcor filters to
catch spam. However, I think I've found an easier way to filter
spam using procmail. I've observed that spammers seldom send mail
to your personal mailing address; instead, they use a mailing list.
So instead of seeing a header line like this:

This rule catches virtually 100% of the spam I get. Unfortunately,
it also catches the mailing lists to which I subscribe. The
solution is to write rules that intercept the valid mailing lists
and put them before the “spam-interceptor”
in your .procmailrc file. This has two advantages: all mailing
lists can be put in a separate folder, and virtually all spam is
caught. The only disadvantage is adding each valid mailing list to
your .procmailrc file. For me, this isn't a problem.

—Roland Smith, The Netherlands rsmit06@ibm.net

Importance of the GUI

I feel compelled to correct Michael Babcock about what he
wrote in his article “The Importance of the GUI in Cross Platform
Development” (March 1998) regarding OpenStep. I have been a
professional consultant for 14 years and have worked on most
workstations, operating systems, languages and engineering
paradigms.

I have been staying with OpenStep/NeXT Step/Rhapsody for some
time now because it is, in my opinion, the best software
development and deployment platform.

OpenStep is not simply a “GUI API (along with some non-GUI
functions)...” as he puts it. The very use of the term “API” is
misleading. OpenStep is an operating system based on a MACH
microkernel, BSD UNIX and object-oriented frameworks, consisting of
other frameworks (of objects and classes) for everything from
graphics to distributed objects to enterprise computing. This is a
radical departure from “APIs” like the ones he discusses in the
article; they are not even in the same category.

OpenStep is a complete software solution that lets you write
programs using its objects, or extending its objects, and can run
on Intel, Motorola, SPARC and HP. Furthermore, the OpenStep OS and
development tools run on Windows95/NT, MACH native Intel, MACH
Motorola, MACH SPARC, Solaris and HP/UX. With Rhapsody around the
corner, we can add Power PC to that list, and most likely Macintosh
OS.

As for the complaint about learning ObjectiveC, I have to say
that it is much easier to learn than Java and has a smaller
linguistic requirement. The hardest thing to learn is that one
sends a message to an object with “[object message:arg]” rather
than “object.message(arg)”.

OpenStep has a lot of momentum behind it right now. Major
Fortune 500 companies and many others have been using it for years.
There is no need for “hype” in order to make this technology
mainstream. It is a well-established technology that in my opinion
could literally save Apple-NeXT. While I am prevented from
disclosing details about Rhapsody, suffice it to say this is truly
a next-generation technology. It is UNIX, too.

Finally, I wish to say that I applaud the efforts of the
GNUStep developers; it would be very useful to have a version that
is free, for which source code is available. My hope is that
Michael Babcock does indeed get an OpenStep box, so that he can
discover his vast underestimation of it for himself.